Digital Food Photography

1.

While shooting, view images on a monitor and make a preliminary selection with the client.

2.

Download the original images from the camera into a folder on your hard drive.

3.

Rename the folder with the date in this format: year, month, day_client name_job. For example, a job for Barilla on September 16, 2005 would be labeled 050916_Barilla_DinnerParty. This will keep all your job folders in chronological order on your hard drive.

4.

Within that folder, create a subfolder named Originals, make sure that all of the original files from your camera are placed in that folder, and always keep them there untouched.

5.

Create three new subfolders and label them Selections,PRINT_300dpi, and WEB_72dpi.

6.

Copy the selections that you made with your client from the Originals folder (leaving the Originals folder intact) and paste them into your Selections folder. You should now have a copy of each selected image in both the Originals folder and the Selections folder.

7.

Retouch the selected files in Photoshop. When you are finished, save the final, retouched image in the PRINT_300dpi folder at 300dpi as a TIFF file, at the full image size it was captured.

8.

Resize that final print version for use on the Web to 72 dpi, sharpen it a little, and save it as a JPEG with image quality set at 9 (I found this to be a good setting to use) in the WEB_72dpi folder.